The same remembrance events happen each year, but how Britain has changed.

Remembrance Day this year, the 11^th day of 11^th month, coincided with the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele.

The battle, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, was from July to November 1917, for control of the ridges south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres in West Flanders, as part of a strategy decided by the Allies at conferences in November 1916 and May 1917. The objective was accomplished on 10 November.

The War to End All Wars

It was a controversial battle from the start. British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was against the offensive, as was General Foch the Chief of Staff of the French Army. In 1938 Lloyd George wrote in his memoirs that Passchendaele was one of the greatest disasters of the war and that no soldier of any intelligence would by then defend the senseless campaign.

Even the number of casualties was unknown, with wildly differing estimates, so that an individual was lost among the multitude counted. Sometimes the numbers were exaggerated to lessen the impact of loss for the costly victory. Somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million casualties from the Allies and the same from the Germans seems to be an acceptable approximation.

Australian wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele. See Photo Credits.Many of those missing soldiers have still not been identified, each one spurred on through national loyalty, obedience to superiors and with the promise that this would be the “war to end wars”.

Personal Points of Contact

Last weekend the nation paused for two minutes to remember, as best we could, the sacrifice of these and so many other lives in succeeding wars. The number of wartime casualties has amassed through the years following the armistice of 1918. Over 60 million people were killed in the Second World War alone, about 3% of the entire 1940 world population.

Not many of us have memories of family and friends who fell in the First World War but quite a few of us are left who have had direct involvement with those who fought the Second World War and succeeding wars.

My RAF service brought me into contact with some who survived the conflict. I also recall the sombre tones of my father whose best friend lost his life as a pilot in the Battle of Britain.

One of my close colleagues told me of the lasting impact that was made on his father who was among the first to enter the death camp of Belsen after the Allied victory. The shock of finding the emaciated, all-but-dead Jewish survivors and the horrendous job of clearing up the carnage left by the Nazis scarred him for the rest of his life.

Somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million casualties on each side were suffered at the Battle of Passchendaele.

Honouring Survivors

I have personally tried to honour those who survived the conflict when I could. For example, I travelled to an air show at Duxford last year with the main aim of shaking the hand of two 617 Dambuster Squadron Air Crew. One was Johnny Johnson, the last British Dambuster. He was the bomb-aimer who released the bouncing bomb on the Sorpe Dam after the ten passes needed to get altitude and speed correct for the drop.

The other was Ken Trent, a later pilot in 617 Squadron, who took part in the horrific 1,000 bomber raids over Germany towards the end of the war, covering his fear on every sortie with the motto “just do it”.

I sometimes wonder about my continued interest in these world conflicts – have I not yet lost my boyhood glamorisation of these heroes? Or do I keep studying just to try to understand why war? Perhaps in truth it is a bit of both.

Faithfully Remembering

Year after year we, as a nation, have faithfully obeyed the call to remember, ensuring our poppies are visible so that we can be seen to be taking part. Yet, this year, when watching the nation’s dignitaries on the television broadcasts of the Festival of Remembrance and Remembrance Day Service in London, I felt something different, something deeper stirring within me. I felt a real unease.

Why? Was it because I thought we who are left are paying tribute to the fallen but in a way that has become unreal? Was it because I sensed an unease from God himself, even though we heard the great hymn sung by those of Christian faith and others of no real faith, “O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come”?

I am being honest here, saying something that may be against the grain for many so soon after the remembrance services. I am truly troubled, even with all my personal involvement and interest in the way our nation has been helped by God.

Year after year we, as a nation, have faithfully obeyed the call to remember.

God Our Help and Hope

I have had personal involvement with the Bible College in Wales where God called for prayer through the Second World War, where every battle was followed and victories were first proclaimed in prayer.

Then, afterwards, the prayer vigil was continued for the resettling of the Jews in their homeland, and victory was proclaimed in prayer even as the UN voted. God surely brought us through these wars and gave their homeland back to the surviving Jews, after great loss to the spiritual enemy through the horrors of the Holocaust by the hand of Adolf Hitler.

Perhaps, knowing this, I was hoping for more recognition of what God has done by those leading the remembrance services. I think though, my unease is because we at Prophecy Today have come to the view that God is displeased with Britain today, so much that he will allow us to go through a time of difficulty. This after all he has previously done for us.

Defending Righteousness

Those who fought the battles on behalf of our nation did so under the principle that they were defending a way of life. That way of life that was fought for is not now, in increasing ways, followed or cherished in this nation.

Once, with a righteousness to proclaim and defend, we were in a much better relationship with God. I think it was the knowledge of this that gave me my unease, mixed in with our remembrance this year of those who fell in the wars.

True remembrance takes account of purpose, or we drift into unreality. With continued respect for those who fell so that we might live, I would ask that we continue to seek God for how he wants us to remember what has been accomplished. Remembrance, in biblical understanding, is not just calling to mind an event, but acting on that prompt in a way that is worthy of the sacrifice.

Biblical remembrance is not just calling to mind an event, but acting on that prompt in a way that is worthy of the sacrifice. 

Sadness and Regret

On reflection, the sadness that I felt at this year's remembrance services was twofold. First it was for the fallen in all the recent wars, tinged with the regret that much was avoidable.

Secondly, it was for the leaders of the nations in our present day. God’s judgments on nations fall when the leaders (shepherds) fail to do their job, and that is what is happening in our day.
The world is still volatile and we are vulnerable as a nation, more so because we are not living under the sure protection of God: we have changed our way of life to accommodate much that is sinful and evil in his eyes.

Whether we have reached a fulfilment of Isaiah 1:14-15 I cannot say with certainty, but this is something worthy of prayer:

…your appointed festivals…have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!

Israel got into this serious position with God and so can Britain.